Shoot-out hero puts his winning penalty down to Lennon rant

RYAN Porteous last night revealed how a dressing room rollicking from former Hibernian manager Neil Lennon three years ago had made it easy for him to take the decisive penalty in his side’s dramatic Scottish Cup quarter-final win over Motherwell.

Centre-half Porteous settled a thrilling encounter between the Premiership rivals at Easter Road that had finished 2-2 after extra-time when he confidently converted his first spot kick in the senior game.

The defender recalled afterwards how Lennon had torn into him for not putting himself forward during a shoot-out after Hibs had been beaten by Aberdeen in a cup tie in the capital back in 2018.

The Scotland Under-21 internationalist admitted he had no qualms about taking responsibility when the last eight encounter had ended level after 120 minutes yesterday.

“I had never taken one for the first team,” said Porteous. “That was my first. I remember we played Aberdeen in the cup here and it went to penalties and I was the youngest in the team. But after the game, Lennon came in and he started screaming at me and asking why I let the kid take the penalty. I was looking about and there was no-one younger than me, but he was meaning Thomas Agyepong [who struck the crossbar].

“But he said: ‘You are a man, so step up and be a man in these high pressure moments’. And that was going through my mind. E v e r s ince then I have been wanting to get back to one and step up and put one away.

“I’ve never taken any at first-team level before, but I was confident of my ability to score. I waited to see what way the goalie went and I saw him move early so put it in the other corner.”

Jack Ross, whose Hibs team have played in two cup semi-finals at Hampden already this season, stressed that he was confident his players would triumph in the shoot-out despite seeing them squander a two-goal lead in the final 10 minutes of regulation time.

“A lot of them do them after training,” he said. “Although some people may be surprised at who actually took them. We have Paul McGinn for example, whose record in penalty shoot-outs is exceptional, even back at St Mirren.

“Ryan Porteous is technically very good so we had faith in a lot of the players. Picking five from them was actually the problem. And we had big presence in the goals too [Matt Macey] which I think helped us.”

Ross (inset, below) added: “You need them to want to take them and Ryan was adamant. That’s him as character, as a young man, he has a bit about him.

“We’ve grown as the season has gone on at handling bigger games and pressure. I know we were 2-0 up, but that can happen in games.”

Hibs lost to Hearts in the rescheduled Scottish Cup semi-final back in October and St Johnstone in the Betfred Cup in February – but Ross feels those disappointments will have no bearing on next month’s semi-final.

“The semi-finals have been strange occasions,” he said. “We just want to win it. We won’t care if we are horrific on the day as long as we win it. When you’ve had the pain of losing these last two semi-finals, we want to make sure we have the elation of getting through.”